“What everybody gets wrong about impact is they think it’s about a transaction, a fund, a project. It’s really about building a system. ”
— Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen
What does it take to move impact investing from a collection of individual transactions to a system — and what is the role of a global field-building organisation when the architecture of development finance is being dismantled faster than it can be rebuilt?
Today’s guest is Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen, CEO of GSG Impact — the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment — a not-for-profit organisation and registered UK charity with 43 national partners covering 48 countries and a mandate to build what she calls impact economies: systems in which governments, investors, businesses, and consumers embed social and environmental outcomes into core decision-making.
Listen in as Elizabeth traces a career that could have gone to Capitol Hill — she comes from three generations of Washington political power, including a grandfather who served as House Majority Leader — but instead led her to Khartoum during a military coup, refugee camps on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, twenty years inside the Inter-American Development Bank, the construction of the UNDP’s SDG Impact Standards, and a senior policy role at the US Development Finance Corporation under the Biden administration.
You’ll hear how GSG Impact’s model differs from every other organisation claiming to mobilise capital for impact — national partners must be locally rooted, represent investors, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and civil society, and go through a two-year application and accreditation process before joining the network. Elizabeth walks through Ghana’s SME investment vehicle as a live example of the model working: domestic pension capital unlocked through sustained policy advocacy, a first-close reached, and a replicable structure now being documented for export across the network.
From the proliferation of impact standards — IRIS+, ISSB, IFVI, GRI, TCFD, SFDR, CSRD, and more — to why she believes the consolidation phase is finally beginning, to the $800 million SME finance target for 2028, and the forthcoming Impact Economy Index that will rank countries on whether their policy, capital markets, and accountability frameworks are actually aligned toward measurable impact outcomes, Elizabeth offers a systems-level view of what the impact investing industry needs to do next.
What does everyone get wrong about impact investing? Why did official development assistance fall 25% last year — the largest annual drop in history — and what does that mean for the field? And is impact winning, or is it getting co-opted?
Elizabeth answers these questions and many more.
If you work in impact investing, development finance, policy, or blended finance — or if you want to understand what it actually takes to build the institutional infrastructure that makes capital move toward social and environmental outcomes at scale — this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
Listen to the full conversation.
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Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
SHOW NOTES:
[03:30] Three Generations: The Boggs Family & Early Lessons in Catalytic Capital
[06:53] Women Who Built Careers & Choosing International Development
[08:01] Georgetown, Madeleine Albright & Joining the UN
[10:10] First Posting: Khartoum, Sudan & the Power of Local
[14:05] Joining the IDB: Microfinance, OMJ & 20 Years of Lessons
[21:20] The Parachute Problem: What Development Finance Gets Wrong
[23:25] UNDP: Building the SDG Impact Standards
[27:15] The DFC: Policy Team Under Biden
[28:25] Joining GSG Impact: Field Builders for the Impact Economy
[32:10] Impact Economies vs. Impact Investments: The Core Thesis
[34:15] Priority 1: National Partnerships & the Ghana Case Study
[36:20] Priority 2: Impact Transparency & Frameworks Proliferation
[41:20] Does Impact Investing Outperform? The Growth Data
[42:35] Priority 3: $800M SME Finance Target & the Impact Economy Index
[47:30] Index Launch, Guardrails & the Race to the Top
[49:15] Geopolitical Reset: ODA Down 25%, USAID Gone, UK Aid Cut
[53:05] China: Avoided or Engaged?
[55:25] Rapid Fire Questions
Additional Resources:
- Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen on LinkedIn
- GSG Impact website
- Elizabeth’s ‘In Chaos, Unity’ article
MORE QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW:
“Make sure you invest in the electrical grid if you’re going to be in the business of light bulbs. ”
— Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen
“Good deals do not automatically create good markets. You need local partners, you need policy alignment. ”
— Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen
